Blackboard Jungle

When I hold an old school slate, desk or blackboard I find in a flea market in my hand, electricity pulses in echoes through time and space and I am inspired to tell its story. I attempt to upcycle these pedagocical artifacts. The energy I feel is real. I want to honor it and give it a new expression. A new life.

I feel the life force of the student who held the worn slates or sat in the desk 150 years ago in what I imagine as a perfectly American Norman Rockwell schoolhouse. I long for a past that may never have been.

Here are some of my drawings and paintings on vintage school artifacts:

Drawn and painted on a 6’ tall vintage school chalkboard.